by Barry Eisler
I flipped it open. “Hey.”
“You must be with my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m on my way to where she’s taking you. Traffic’s going to be hell, but I shouldn’t be more than thirty minutes. I’ll tell you more then.”
“We’re going to need a vehicle. And a Civic won’t do it.”
“It’s taken care of. I’ll see you soon.”
He clicked off. I put the phone back in the beverage holder. “Sounds like we’re on schedule,” I said.
“Good.”
The ride to the mall took about forty minutes. Dox entertained the kids by telling them stories of parachuting out of airplanes and what happens if a chute doesn’t open, and insisting they had to be patient and wait until they were older before doing it themselves, and advising them they’d have to get permission from their mother before they could go with him. I envied his touch. I’ve never been good with children. I think because they sense things adults have learned to suppress.
Yuki made a right into the parking lot and circled counterclockwise over to a satellite parking area. It was far from the mall and mostly empty, the few vehicles belonging to employees, I guessed, not to mall patrons who would have had to trek across the baking pavement to reach the stores. One of the vehicles was a large U-Haul truck—twelve feet, I estimated, maybe fourteen. It struck me as a little odd that it would be parked in a shopping mall, and so far from the building itself, and I wondered if this might be what Kanezaki meant when he said the vehicle was “taken care of.”
It was indeed. As we pulled closer, the driver-side door opened and Kanezaki stepped out. He looked like pretty much any other D.C. area drone on his way home from the office—suit jacket gone, tie loosened, skin a little oily from repeated trips between air-conditioned buildings and the blast furnace outside. He still had the wireframe spectacles, but he was a little thinner than I remembered, a new maturity in his eyes and his features. Still the same guy I’d first run into in Tokyo so many years earlier, yes, but no longer a fresh-faced, idealistic kid. He’d been grappling with the real world since then, and its weight had left marks.
Yuki pulled in alongside the truck. I got out and shook Kanezaki’s hand. “Keys are in it,” he said, characteristically dispensing with small talk. “You should go.”
“You have anything new for me?”
He waved to Yuki. “The truck’s not enough?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. No new intel. But when I do, I’ll upload it to the secure site.”
“What do we do with the truck? When does it need to be back?”
“I got it for a month. Hopefully by then the pressure will be off and we’ll figure something out. The rental agreement is in the glove compartment.”
The side door slid open and Rina and Rika both exclaimed, “Uncle Tomo!”
Kanezaki waved to them.
I said, “Uncle Tomo?”
He shrugged. “You know, for Tomohisa. Uncle Tom sounds odd, anyway.”
Dox squeezed out and shook Kanezaki’s hand. “Good to see you, man,” he said. “Seems like you’re always helping us out of a jam.”
“And always in exchange for something,” I said.
Larison and Treven got out. Rina called out, “Uncle Tomo, what are you doing here?”
“Your mom’s picking me up, hon! It’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the way.”
He turned to the four of us. “I don’t know where you’re going, and it’s better if I don’t. Just make it far away. They’re going to be looking for you in the capital, and they can look hard there.”
Larison eyeballed the truck. “I like your choice of ride.”
Kanezaki nodded. “Nobody’s going to notice a moving truck. This one’s got Wyoming plates and no one looks twice even here in Maryland. Plus, two or even three of you can stay concealed in back while one drives. They’re looking for four, so best if you’re not seen together. Speaking of which. You should go.”
“My lord,” Dox said. “It’s going to be a goddamn sauna back there. Anybody mind if I drive?”
No one said anything. Dox got in the truck. Treven and Larison went around to the back.
“I didn’t have time to pick up water or anything else,” Kanezaki said. “It’s got a full tank of gas and I bought a bunch of boxes and rolls of bubble wrap so you’ll at least have something to sit on in back, but that’s about it. When it’s dark and you’re well clear of the city, you can stop and pick up whatever you need. I’ll be in touch as soon as I learn more.”
“There was a problem at the hotel,” I said.
He looked at me, his expression strained. “What do you mean?”
“Four guys. They must have been Horton’s. Somehow they followed us, or anticipated us. They came up short. I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it.”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked over at the van. At his nieces.
“Sounds like your sister’s pretty smart,” I said. “She told me she borrowed the plates on the van from some random car in a suburban neighborhood. There must be tens of thousands of vans like hers in the D.C. area. She’s safe. No one can track her.”
He wiped the sweat off his forehead and ran his fingers back through his hair. “Jesus. I didn’t…Jesus.”
He went to the van and slid the side door closed, then got into the passenger seat. I walked over and he rolled the window down.
“Thanks,” I said. “To both of you.”
Yuki looked at me and I could have sworn she was almost smiling.
“I don’t want to know,” she said, shaking her head. Then she pointed at Kanezaki and said, “We’re even, Mister State Department.”
He nodded grimly. “You could say that.”
I wondered what the hell he’d done for her. Whatever it was, he’d called in his marker, and she’d paid it off.
Hopefully not at higher interest than she’d been expecting.
We stayed off the interstates on our way out of Maryland, heading northwest and crossing the Potomac at the Point of Rocks Bridge, far from the Beltway and Route 95, Dox driving while I rode shotgun. The sun was getting low in the sky, but there was still plenty of daylight left. I wanted it to get dark. I kept half-expecting a phalanx of police cars to swing into position behind us, lights on and sirens screaming. It didn’t make sense, of course, but then neither did those four guys at the Hilton. The only thing I was sure of was that the farther we got from the city, the better I’d feel.
We kept the radio on to see if there was any news about the hotel shooting. There was plenty, but it was confused and incomplete. Witnesses claiming to have heard gunshots; police cordoning off the hotel; the cops saying little other than that they were investigating a possible shooting. It might have been routine; it might have been Horton behind the scenes, leaning on the locals in the name of “national security,” and concealing the identities, and affiliations, of the dead men.
We talked about what had happened at the hotel, about what could have been the flaw in our security. If we couldn’t identify it, we had to assume it was still a problem, and the feeling of some hidden vulnerability that could undermine us at any time was maddening.
“You’re sure you weren’t followed,” I said as we drove.
“Hell, yes,” Dox said. “We did a solid detection run from the airport. Multiple cab changes, a subway ride, you know the drill. No one could have been on us without our knowing.”
I fought the urge to remind him that he shouldn’t have been using the airport itself. But I recognized the impulse as driven by an urge to lash out, not by anything possibly productive. Besides, even if they should have steered clear of the airport to start with, if they weren’t followed, they weren’t followed.
“You said you went to a gun show,” I said. “What about that?”
“We did a run after that, too. One hundred percent clean.”
“What about—”
“The hotel, right
? Made the reservation from a gas station payphone in Merrifield, Virginia. After I was already for damn sure we were clean.”
“All right, what about—”
“Our cell phones were off the whole time. Larison double checked us. That boy’s as paranoid as you.”
I considered. “You think he or Treven could have tipped Horton off?”
“Hard to say. Maybe the hotel shooters were supposed to drop just us, not the two of them. If so, though, somebody didn’t get the memo, ’cause Larison and Treven shot the shit out of all four of them. You saw it, too.”
I nodded, frustrated and angry. Being tracked when you think you’re untrackable is one of the worst, most vulnerable feelings there are.
“Know what I think?” Dox said.
“Tell me.”
“I think we’re entering an age where freelancers like you and me are going to have to consider the attractions of retirement. I mean, there are just too many ways the opposition can get a handle on us now. Video cameras everywhere, surveillance drones being deployed over American cities, the NSA spying domestically, the government and all the Internet and telecom companies working together, satellites and supercomputers crunching all that data…I just think we’re in a world now where, if the man wants to find you, you’re going to get found. Which means you either work for the man, or you don’t work at all.”
I didn’t answer. Maybe he was right. Maybe things had reached a point where there was no room for men like us anymore. Maybe we’d become vestiges, anachronisms, cogs on one last circuit within a machine that no longer had any use for us, a machine that was preparing to snap us off and spit us out so it could grind along even more senselessly and relentlessly than it ever had before.
Outside Culpeper, as it was finally beginning to get dark, we pulled over at a gas station to fuel up and use the bathroom. Treven and Larison were soaked with sweat but they volunteered to spend a little more time in back because they were already used to it. I briefed them about the radio reports, but there wasn’t much to tell. There was a brief discussion about who should pick up provisions. Treven had green eyes, Larison had that danger aura, and I was Asian. And Treven and Larison both looked like they’d just emerged from a steam room. That left Dox as the least noticeable, and least memorable, of the four of us. He bought a road atlas, a lot of bottled water, and some granola bars, and we headed back out into the slowly cooling night.
We kept moving south, the radio nothing but anodyne local news and traffic reports. Then the announcer’s voice became suddenly alive and urgent.
“We have a developing situation,” he said. “Reports of an attack on the White House. A suicide bombing.”
“Jesus Christ almighty,” Dox said, reaching for the volume.
The announcer said, “Police and paramedics are arriving at the scene. We have reports of horrific injuries. As far as we know, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. It’s not clear whether the president is even in the White House at this time.”
“What the hell are they talking about?” I said. “That place is a fortress. A suicide bombing? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe another airplane?”
“They would have said as much.”
He glanced at me, his face grim, then back to the road. “Whatever it is, it looks like we cleared the way for it. Damn. Goddamn. Should we stop and let Larison and Treven know?”
“No, keep driving. This was supposed to happen while we were in the city, you get that? It’s sealed off now. I’ll bet they’ve got National Guard units stopping traffic on the Beltway, everything. I want to put as much distance as possible between us and whatever’s going on back in Washington.”
I told myself it wasn’t our fault. But Dox’s words kept echoing in my mind.
Whatever it is, it looks like we cleared the way for it.
We drove on, listening. There was nothing new, mostly repeats of what had already been said, in tones alternating between hysteria and ecstasy. Gradually, a little clarity emerged. It wasn’t an attack on the White House itself, but on one of the guard posts outside. Still, it was a huge explosion. There were scores of civilian casualties, and a section of the iron-barred fence that protected the property had been destroyed. Apparently the president was all right. He was in the White House, and was going to address the nation at nine o’clock.
“Prime time,” Dox observed, his tone disgusted. “Likely a coincidence.”
At Buckingham, Virginia, we left Route 15 and started tracking west. When we were just outside Appomattox, the president went live.
“We all know what happened tonight,” he said. “A cowardly individual blew himself up outside the White House, murdering and injuring many scores of innocent civilians. No one in the White House itself was injured, and, other than some damage to a fence, the building’s security was not compromised.
“What we don’t yet know precisely is who committed this atrocity, or why. But rest assured, our nation’s military, law enforcement, and intelligence services are assembling answers to those questions now. And when they have completed their task, justice will be done to the perpetrators.”
“That’s what they’re calling military action these days,” Dox said. “Justice. I guess it has a better ring to it than invasion, bombardment, and slaughter.”
“Shh.”
“Now, I want to address a rumor,” the president went on. “First, that before blowing himself up, the terrorist shouted, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ which means ‘God is great’ in Arabic, and is a common Islamic invocation and sometimes a war cry. We don’t have confirmation of this, and it is irresponsible of the media to report it as though it has in fact been confirmed.”
“Rumor?” Dox said. “Who started the rumor? Sounds like the president is starting it himself!”
“That’s exactly what he’s doing, either deliberately, or because it’s being fed to him.”
“Well, how the hell—”
“Shh. He’s talking again.”
“Our task tonight,” the president went on, “is to pray for the victims and their families. And to thank the men and women of our armed forces and intelligence services, who, even as I speak, are risking their lives to protect our homeland and our liberties. Let us pray for them, as well.”
There was the clamor of reporters trying to ask questions, and then the announcer was back on, explaining that the president had left the briefing room.
Dox glanced over at me, then back to the road. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean it, John. I mean…this is some top level shit we’re mixed up in here.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, false flag terror attacks? And we’ve been fingered for it? Forgive me if I sound gloomy, but I don’t see a clear way out of this.”
“You do sound gloomy.”
He laughed softly. “Well, cheer me up then.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Not to mention—”
“I know. We cleared the way for it.”
We didn’t stop again until Roanoke. It was nearly midnight and we’d been driving for over eight hours. Dox and I briefed Treven and Larison about the incident outside the White House. No one said anything, but I knew we were all thinking the same thing: we were fucked.
We picked up fast food, gassed up again, and agreed to change positions. “It’s not that bad,” Treven said. “A lot cooler than before, and your friend was smart to pick up that bubble wrap. It’s actually pretty comfortable, if you’re lying down on it.”
Dox and I had discussed our discomfort at the prospect of being closed up in the cargo area, helpless and blind, while Treven and Larison drove. If someone put a lock on the exterior, the truck would be turned into a prison. Not that anyone was carrying a lock or had time to buy one, but still. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because what choice did we have? None of us could risk public transportation. Dox had been right about our odds of
hiding from the modern surveillance state. And Larison had been right when he’d told Treven that going off alone meant being the first one picked off. If we were going to resolve this, our best chance was to stick together, and to find a way to attack back.
Treven and Larison were indifferent about what we ate, so I was glad when, on the morning of the second day, Dox insisted we stop at a Whole Foods outside Nashville. We loaded up with enough chow to see us comfortably all the way to the Pacific, then found a Wal-Mart and threw a couple futons and sleeping bags in the back. The futons were something, but Dox had been right, it was a damn sauna back there when the sun was high, and there wasn’t any good way to cool it down. We considered buying bags of ice but then decided against it. We didn’t want to take a chance on the melting runoff attracting the attention of some highway patrol.
We also stopped at a Starbucks so I could access their free Wi-Fi, and I checked the secure site. I half-expected a message from Horton, trying to explain away the unexplainable. But he must have known how useless that would be under the circumstances. He’d used us, then tried to clip us like the loose end we now represented. We knew he would try again, just as he knew we’d be gunning to get to him first. The state of play was so clear that anything anyone might have said would have been useless, even absurd.
There was a message from Kanezaki, though. He described the attack at the White House, which the media had gotten more or less right after the initial, confused reports. And he said the NSA was picking up chatter about more attacks coming. There were rumors about the president considering a major response. Kanezaki wanted me to call him, and I wrote that I couldn’t, not for another day or two. After the ambush at the hotel, my paranoia was at a full simmer. Maybe Horton had managed to stitch together enough data from airport surveillance cameras and satellite imagery to track us to the Hilton. He’d been expecting us in the city, after all. If so, and if he’d lost track of us after the hotel, then even with all the technology in the world, for the time being we’d be the proverbial needle in a haystack. I didn’t want to take any chance at all about a call being traced to a location this far west, from which the opposition might predict our further trajectory. From which Horton might even guess where we were ultimately heading, and why.